Technically, for me, making art is a roughly a two step process. First step is making of an under-painting: staining high quality watercolor paper with with ink and water. This is purely expressive, no-brainier step that I like to envision as a metaphor of the flow of pure emotion, of raw emotional energy. I let ink drip on wet paper, either directly from a bottle or from a tip of a large brush and let it freely mix with water allowing the two mediums to combine and merge as they please creating interesting effects. This mixing of ink and water is only loosely guided by my hand and brush gestures (the nature of these gestures is usually dictated by my emotional state) but basically I allow ink and water to and move and dance on their own, so to speak. I like to work in layers, as ink and water have done their dance I let the stain dry then repeat the process building an interesting texture which becomes a foundation for my artwork.

Step two is drawing (using either brush or gel ink pens) intricate patterns on top of my texture. I see this step as expression of mental energy since I see my patterns, dots and clusters of tiny circles, lines etc as thought forms, thought patterns. Unlike the first step that I just sort of, allow to happen, this is a very deliberate, conscious process of picking and choosing which parts of the underlying texture to accentuate and embellish and which simple shapes to use, what kind of patterns to create. The ultimate goal is to make a harmonious blend of the two, of the expressive, raw, free flowing emotional energy and conscious, deliberate, somewhat calculated thought process. This process of harmonizing the two can sometimes feel like a challenging balancing act but once it's achieved I consider the artwork finished. Of course, another important goal of all this harmonizing and balancing is to create something beautiful, beautiful art is always the goal.